


The Call

by gallantrejoinder



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Village, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Gen, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 20:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallantrejoinder/pseuds/gallantrejoinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya is waiting for something to happen, unaware that it will change everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Call

**Author's Note:**

> I had a dream that I grew rather painful fangs, and here we are.

Arya can’t tell when it begins. It feels as if the waiting has come from within her, as if it’s been there all the time. She waits with frustrated impatience, not knowing what it is that she’s waiting for, but yearning for it to come. Her skin crawls at night, and her sister tells her she grinds her teeth in sleep, eyebrows knitted together while she tosses and turns and _waits_. Her eyes are bruised darkly in the mornings, but Sansa doesn’t ask her to leave their tiny loft of a room. As if Arya could sleep better apart from her anyway.

During the daylight hours, she’s good at hiding her nerves. She looks like any one of her brothers, training with swords and arrows and axes, treasuring the hours between working with weapons and working in the fields, jiggling her knee every moment she is required to sit still. She gnaws her way through stolen bits of weirwood bark, hating the taste, but finding herself starving, craving food at all hours of the day. When it is presented to her, though, she wrinkles her nose in disgust and mashes vegetables and meat and bread together, an unrecognisable mess, and feels like a child again. She drinks only to sustain herself, struggling to swallow down sour wine and bitter water, her stomach roiling like an open sea. Still she waits.

She is no stranger to violent dreams. The blood she has spilled has cascaded over her time and time again while she sleeps, a punishment for the terror she brings to those who would defy the fragile calm in their little village, her father’s own rebellious people. When her wolf died, there was no more escaping the dead who crowded in from every side in her nightmares. There was no more dreaming of the peaceful forest, and now she thinks this must be how Sansa felt, all those years ago, her wolf dead and only a pup. Without Nymeria, the dead claw at Arya’s skin and shriek her name in the night. But dreams change. She doesn’t see dead people any more. Now, she is alone.

She dreams that her body is being torn apart. Her bones splinter like a wooden sword, and her flesh melts off her as if a fire has consumed her body. She screams and screams and screams, but no one hears, and in the morning she tastes blood in her mouth where she has bitten down on her lips and tongue. She knows Sansa is worried – she doesn’t want them to hate each other again, like they did when the boy Joffrey was still chief of the village, with his manipulative mother scheming and plotting to keep him there, turning the villagers against each other with every flash of her grinning teeth. 

But Arya cannot explain this to Sansa, or to anyone, no matter how badly she wants to. She waits for whatever it is to come. Then she will tell – her sister, her father, her mother, her brothers. Only after it comes. For now, she must wait.

Unfortunately, as so often happens, it comes when she can’t fight back. And there is no chance of protecting her family from it.

She awakens drenched in sweat and breathing quickly. Another nightmare, another agony. She shudders as she steps out of the bed and onto the cold, creaking floor, Sansa still sleeping peacefully. Though the moon shines brightly through the window, she finds it hard to see clearly. Her head is pounding and she finds it hard to walk, barely starting towards the trapdoor before sliding down the wall. She leans her head back against the wood, her breath coming fast and shallow. _Something is wrong._

Her limbs feel weak, and there is fire racing up her spine, but the greatest pain throbs without warning through her mouth. She gasps and whines quietly, her sister still slumbering on, oblivious. Her fingers scratch into the chilly floor as she struggles to remain lucid. Some instinct makes her pull her lips into a snarl and her tongue back into her mouth, and just in time, for there is suddenly a blinding pain in her upper gums, as sharp teeth tear through them and drip blood onto her chin. She cries out with the pain, nearly sobbing, and finally her sister stirs in the bed. 

Arya tries to warn her, but her voice dips into a growl as the colours of the room warp and transform. Sansa’s hair turns confusing shades Arya cannot name as she sits up in the bed. She’s not sure how, but suddenly Sansa is at her side, speaking words Arya doesn’t understand. She knows they are full of concern and alarm, the tone rising louder and louder as she can’t find the words to answer her sister, her tongue becoming uncooperative; unintelligible whining issuing from her throat. 

She forces her eyes shut against the dizzying swirls of colour, and hunches in on herself, lurching forwards onto her knees. Terror builds up in her throat as she feels her nightmares manifesting; her bones cracking loudly and her flesh rippling over her body. She feels a pressure building in her chest, and the unnatural noises she’s making growing more and more desperate, and it all comes to its climax as she throws her head back and screams, howling in pain while her sister shouts for help. 

And then, Arya Stark is gone. 

What is left in her place opens her eyes, and sees only prey before her. 

Without thinking, she launches forward, pinning it to the unnatural, manmade ground, and tears into its side with her still-throbbing teeth, indifferent to the cries of pain that come from bloodied mess beneath her.

But she cannot ignore the shouts of men, the high-pitched scrape of metal on metal – swords, _danger_. She clumsily crashes from side to side, abandoning her prey, knocking chairs and books and bowls to the ground and smashing the sides of the trapdoor as she leaps for freedom, half falling and half sprinting down the ladder from the loft. She rips the door apart with her rough, new claws and forces herself through in her bid for freedom.

And the night air is sweet to smell, the woods calling for her in the distance, and the moon is full and high, reigning over the heavens. She leaves the world of men for the sharp taste of pine and the bitter scent of weirwoods in the depths of the forest, while screams follow from behind, with fire and metal and blood.

**Author's Note:**

> So [Ines](http://sandorclegane.tumblr.com) has this fantastic AU where all the characters in ASoIaF basically live in a tiny little village somewhere and also there are werewolves. Which is frankly bloody fantastic, and you can find it [here.](http://sandorclegane.tumblr.com/tagged/werestarks)
> 
> Also, this story will eventually contain Sansa/Sandor, and you'll have to wait and see which other Starks display signs of lycanthropy! All the credit goes to Ines of course, and it's with her permission that I wrote this. Though not GRRM's, as you will not be surprised to know.


End file.
